One of the most common questions that is usually asked by brands is “What Should I Tweet?” In fact a recent research conducted by Optimal indicates that Twitter delivers a smaller yet active audience when compared with Facebook. However, Twitter is less understood as a marketing channel and many social media marketers are even unsure about what to do when it comes to executing well-planned promotional strategies on this platform. What can be done to jumpstart a Twitter initiative by just using 140 characters or less?

Social Media Marketing should include Call to Action!

CTA or Call to Action is considered to be an essential part of inbound marketing. Their goal is convert a user into a lead and then later into a customer. These are considered to be a medium through which you can entice your social media audience to focus on the action that you want them to take.

Recently, Twitter analyzed more than 20,000 promoted tweets that were randomly sampled over a 3 month period. They examined how various types of Promoted Tweet engagements differed depending on which types of calls to action were included, and compared them to a baseline of Promoted Tweets that did not include any calls to action. Here are the results:

4 best Twitter calls to action

1. Ask for a download – Do you have a new product to promote, which is also available for download? Tweets in timeline which explicitly ask people to download from an included link increase URL clicks by an average of 13%. Tweets in search that feature this call to action increase clicks by an average of 11%.

Tips from Twitter:

Give people clear direction

Offer an incentive to click

Use Hashtags and @ mentions to keep users focused on a single action

Set a deadline to increase the sense of urgency

2. Ask for a retweet – You can create your tweet in a manner that offers a clear and compelling reason to retweet your message. This can further help you to increase retweets by an average of 311%.

Here Twitter recommends:

Instead of using RT, use the full form – retweet

Give your audience a reason to retweet your tweet by giving them something valuable in return.

3. Ask for a follow – Reaching new audience on Twitter could be as simple as asking for a follow. Twitter data shows that tweet that is asked for a follow increased responses by 258%.

Suggestions offered by Twitter to improve effectiveness are:

Highlight the exclusive content that you are offering

Provide an incentive to follow you by promoting contests and prizes.

4. Ask for a reply – It has been found that tweets, which ask for reply increase replies by an average of 334%. When this call to action appears on the search results, replies significantly increase to 307%.